I pointed out that buried deep inside the mammoth bill was a provision
allowing the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees or
their agents "access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax
returns or return information contained therein." In other words, these
statesmen could look at your tax return or the return of any other American
taxpayer.

I have since come to realize how petty I am. After all, I hadn't
read the bill either. And I didn't realize how many good provisions
were also buried in the bill. For examples:

There's a $1 million appropriation for the "Wild American Shrimp
Initiative." I don't know about you, but I like shrimp
— and anything that enhances their
initiative is okay with me.

There's also $515,000 for "brown tree snake management." I hate
snakes, and I'm glad to see the government doing something to manage
them.

And there's $150,000 for the "Therapeutic Horseback Riding Program" at
the Lady B Ranch in California. If it's for therapy, I'm all for it.

There's $150,000 for "Fishing Rationalization Research" in Alaska. I've
only been fishing once in my life, and the fish didn't seem very
rational to me. So maybe it's about time the government did something
about that.

There also are generous appropriations for such things as the
development of a curriculum for the study of mariachi music (making for
better relations with our darker brothers), training students in the
motor sports industry (keeping them off the street), a presidential
yacht (which should be useful on the Crawford ranch), and relocating a
kitchen somewhere in Alaska (I assume it's now in the wrong place).

Perhaps most
important, there's $4 million for important research at the
International Fertilizer Development Center in Alabama, as well as $2.3
million for the Animal Waste Management Laboratory in Kentucky. Good!
Maybe they'll finally do something to make the stuff smell better.

(Back in 1951, Eleanor Roosevelt was visiting Bess Truman at the White
House. Mrs. Roosevelt asked where Harry was. Bess replied that Harry said he
was going outside to put manure on the plants. Mrs. Roosevelt asked whether
it would be possible to teach Harry to say fertilizer. Bess replied, "My
dear, it's taken me 30 years to teach Harry to say manure.")

Meanwhile, Back at Reality . . .

My tongue is getting a bit tired, so perhaps it's time to take it out of
my cheek.

The items I've recited are, of course, just a few of the hundreds
(if not thousands) of pieces of pork residing in the $388 billion
Omnibus Spending Bill.

I'm indebted to John P. Avlon of the
New York Sun for digging up these and other examples, and reporting
them in his article "Wanted: Wild-Hog Control.". (You
can read the article online at the Sun's website, but you have to
sign up for a paid subscription first.)

Since I'm convinced that the federal government could operate easily (and
more efficiently) on much less than $100 billion per year (with much better
national defense than we have now), the Omnibus Spending Bill is by
itself at least four times larger than the entire government should be.

How Did This Happen?

Of course, this sort of profligate spending has been going on for years.
How did it get started?

The seeds of today's
runaway government were planted when it was decided that government
should help those who can't help themselves.

Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should
help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it. If the
coercion of government can endow one person with property he hasn't earned,
then everyone will want to use government to get something he wants. So it's
not surprising that, over the past two centuries, more and more people have
concluded that they deserve government's help.

"Helping those who can't help themselves" is a paraphrase of Karl Marx'
famous dictum:

From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need.

And once that principle is adopted, more and more people will want to be
part of the needy, rather than part of the able
— because nearly everyone prefers to be on the "to" side of
transfers, rather than the "from" side.

There's No Limit

You can't help a few people without everyone else wanting to be helped as
well.

You can't limit government's coercion to just those transfers you believe
are fair, because you can't give government the power to force good on the
country without also giving it the power to force enormous evil on the
country — in fact, to do anything it
wants. It becomes a tool for obtaining whatever anyone can't get on his own
— an instrument for every frustrated
ambition.

So it was inevitable not only that the government would grow and become
more powerful, but that the growth would accelerate
— perhaps imperceptibly at first, but
then faster and faster. The potential beneficiaries (as well as Congress,
the executive, and the bureaucrats) have an interest in pushing government
to get bigger.

And since politicians aren't legally liable for the harm they do, there's
no point at which they have a reason to stop expanding their own power and
wealth by expanding the government. Thus it's no surprise that after
stripping us bare, they continue on and mortgage our children's
future to pay for further expansion.

And it's no surprise that there isn't a single area of our lives that
Congress would be reluctant to legislate and regulate.

Fixing the System

Nor is it a surprise that people elected to change the system usually
join it instead. After all, once elected, these people have the power of big
government at their disposal — and power
is a heady commodity. Few can resist the temptation to use it to "do good" —
to receive the applause of would-be reformers and the gratitude of those on
the receiving end of government favors.

And it should be no surprise that every attempt to reform government
simply makes it worse. "Reform" won't transform a gorilla into a lamb, and
politicians and administrators who've spent their lives seeking power aren't
suddenly going to decide not to use it.

The important first step in changing the system is to stop supporting
anyone who is making government bigger —which includes the President, the Vice-President, the 100 Senators, and
434 of the 435 Congressmen (Ron Paul being the only exception I know of).

Then we must create a tidal wave of public opinion that tells the people
in Washington that we won't tolerate what they're doing. And don't fall for the idea that people won't help us because they're too enamored with
what little they get from government. All they have to do is look at their
1040 forms to see how much they pay for so little in return.

Government is a scam. And like any other scam, it can be exposed for what
it really is.

And once people see that there's nothing substantial or valuable behind
the curtain, the game will be up — and
we'll have one generation in which to find a way to "bind them down from
mischief" permanently, in a more secure way than the founders discovered in
1789.